


South for the Winter

by jenphalian



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, due South
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Fraser is Great at Hugs, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, due Winter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 09:02:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3169163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenphalian/pseuds/jenphalian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don't care anymore, I'm just a trash human being who writes Winter Soldier/Fraser fic. This is going to be awesome. Shut up, yes it is, I have loved due South since I was a kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which A Sad Trash Hobo Finds A Light In the Darkness

It is cold here, but he doesn't mind the cold. He used to spend a lot of time in cold cold boxes. Also, it was a long way to travel with no money, avoiding detection, but the place he was trained is much larger, more desolate. Surviving the wilds of the American midwest is nothing.

He knows that he has been called the Winter Soldier, the Asset, and 'thing'. He used to be human. He is very very good at destroying things, at fighting. The man on the helicarrier who was the man from the bridge called him a name, and it was a human name. Who did it belong to? He has most of the body of a man, with some upgrades and a killer robot arm.

Stored safely in his lair is a backpack full of helpful stuff he has been collecting along the way. Americans store things very insecurely. The suburbs of Washington were like a candy store, and sometimes when he was 'shopping' he thought uncomfortably of Brooklyn but kept reminding himself that there was never an op in Brooklyn. In the months since the moment he decided--like a person with free will and everything!--not to return to his handlers, he has traveled. It got colder and more rural as he went, and sometimes there were cities but he mostly avoided them.

Then he learned a thing about the American midwest: all roads lead to Chicago. All railways, all rivers, everything goes to Chicago. So fine, he couldn't think of a reason not to go there as well.

It is very cold, though.

He is in the Loop, which is not a poetic name for the heart of a city, but poetry is not useful for operations anyway so who cares, and the cutting wind comes off the lake. It doesn't feel like Russia, but the minuscule ashen snowflakes driving through the air don't *not* feel like Russia, either.

Maybe it wasn't even Russia that he remembers training in. Or being trained, like a dog. Maybe it was for a while and then it wasn't. He speaks Russian, but then again, he also speaks French and Spanish and English. Who cares. He doesn't have to train anymore and there will not be another op ever again. He has figured out what year it is but not why the year seems like science fiction. He knows how to use the cell phone he has acquired. His twitter account would look like spam to anyone that bothered to look, but he can use it to follow what the Avengers are doing.

Not that he cares what Captain America is doing. Caring is a thing that people do and he isn't really a people. But when an Asset betrays its side and drags a still-living target out of the murky depths for emergency services to find, it is good to make sure that the ex-target is still alive. That the ex-target survived and has made appearances before the Senate and on cable news and the Daily Show. Sometimes the ex-target has had his picture taken with a man who looks strong and they smile at each other. Someone should target the fucking paparazzi. But obviously the ex-target is happy.

Happy is not a thing that seems like a real thing and he wonders why he thought of the target like that. Not for very long, though, because then there is a white wolf sniffing at him.

"Excuse me, sir!" There is an actual member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police jogging toward him. The Mountie's outfit is impeccable and he looks dangerous. And handsome. 

Wait, what was that thought, stop it.

He is holding out his actual hand, not the metal one, palm-down for the wolf to sniff. It might smell less threatening than the noisome hoodie he has on as a top layer. Eyes slide off the homeless, embarrassed, and it is easy to hide himself this way in a city like Chicago.

He is looking at the wolf and then at the Mountie jogging closer. What do they want? Ugh, interacting with humans is terrible. Just when the Mountie draws up to a stop, he decides to say: "this is a nice wolf."

It makes the Mountie smile and then he feels a certain tightness low in his body and if these kind of feelings are human feelings he really hopes to go back to being an asset soon maybe. This is weird.

The wolf's name is Diefenbaker and the Mountie has a good jaw and strong eyebrows. No wait. The Mountie is named Constable Fraser. He seems to have a hard-on for helping homeless people so maybe this is the one time that using a homeless-person disguise did not work the way it should have. Why did he think hard-on, don't get a hard-on, stop it.

Being in a conversation is strange. His voice feels rusty but he is accepting an invitation to drink coffee. Coffee is good, it has always been good, he remembers that from training and maybe even before training. He is walking towards a Starbucks next to Constable Fraser, who is talking about his wolf like his wolf were a person and suddenly Bucky decides to say: "I am Bucky. It is nice to meet you."

Where did that come from? That was the name the ex-target used. Constable Fraser seems really good like the ex-target, like they're both gooey on the inside, and maybe hugging Constable Fraser would feel good like hugging Steve used to feel. What the hell are these thoughts, what is happening what why?

But now Bucky has identified himself and it feels correct so he is going to just go with it. Overthinking about a decision that already happened is stupid so he is not going to do that.

Constable Fraser thinks that it is nice to meet Bucky and they shake hands and Bucky tries to alter his facial expression to indicate the pleasant thoughts he is having about Constable Fraser, but Diefenbaker makes a low threatening sound that rises to a whine so maybe it didn't quite work.

They go into the Starbucks and the lady behind the counter says, "Hey Fraser, I've got a bunch of day-old biscotti if you and your, uh, friend want it." The Constable accepts the bag of rock-hard chocolate-dipped things and he orders something that sounds like a dessert, and Bucky is disappointed because he had been led to believe there was going to be coffee. The lady won't accept money from Constable Fraser, and she thanks him for some unspecified thing that he says was just his job. Bucky knows because he was trained to know such things that Mounties are police.

He is sitting at a tiny table surveying the exits and fantasizing about committing armed robbery in Canada so an impeccably-dressed mountie would burst in and stop him and wrestle him to the ground, strong thighs pressing against him. He realizes that Constable Fraser has been trying to converse with him and he shakes his head and tries to remember how to be a person.

"I'm sorry, Constable Fraser, my mind wandered."

"That's alright, Mister Bucky. I asked if you'd like to try one of these fine caramel macchiatos."

"Oh. Bucky is not my surname. Call me just Bucky." He reaches to accept the white paper cup. There is whipped cream involved.

"I see. Well, Fraser actually is my surname, but you can call me just Fraser should you wish to."

Bucky nods and decides to drink some of the caramel macchiato and then there's about a minute that he can't remember because caramel macchiatos are fucking amazing. He sees stars and they're not red ones. He tastes rich flavors and underneath it is hot coffee and this did not come out of a mess hall, oh shit, that's good, fucking macchiato, fuck, wow.

Constable Fraser is leaving Starbucks when he comes to. Half the coffee beverage is gone now, a coldness on his nose indicates some whipped cream got stuck there, and the paper bag of biscotti is left on the table.

Bucky watches Diefenbaker jump up from the spot where he has been obediently sitting and follow Fraser down the sidewalk. He doesn't know why he wants to spend time with the Mountie, but he definitely does, in the same way that he wants to drink macchiato all the time from now on, and he doesn't want Fraser to see him like a homeless person ever again. Bucky decides that maybe it is time to clean himself up and find out more about Constable Fraser.


	2. In Which Our Heroes Share A Meal and Something More

Fraser comes home to his apartment and feeds Diefenbaker first thing. His decor isn't shabby chic so much as just kinda shabby, like it was decorated for a '90s cop show and never updated. The blonde wood end table by the front door has stacks of mail on it. Fraser sighs--he used to be a lot more conscientious about managing his backlog of paperwork. He drops a boxed dinner in the microwave and goes into the bedroom to change for the night. His stiff brown hat goes on its hook next to the closet. He folds his clothes before dropping them in the dirty laundry hamper. He only just barely has time to freshen the polish on his black leather boots before the microwave goes ~ding~.

"You know, Dief, these frozen dinners don't make any sense. A hungry woman is just as likely to purchase and eat one." One sweatpant-clad hip leans against his eighteen inches of warped linoleum counter and he isn't wearing a shirt, just letting his manly Canadian pecs and abs hang out all over the place. Fraser's wolf watches his lips through this comment and then goes back to licking his food dish.

A faint noise catches the Mountie's attention. Fraser sets down the dinner half-eaten and takes the fork with him. He prowls his own apartment, occasionally stopping to touch or sniff something. Finally he steps in front of the window that opens onto the fire escape. He throws open the sash, yells "HA!" and leans out, leading with the fork. A man is squatting on the fire escape, and the man doesn't flinch at all, just blocks. There is a sound of metal on metal and the fork falls several stories to the ground.

"Good evening, Constable Fraser. I wasn't certain if you were taking callers this evening."

"I was wondering when you'd turn up again, Winter Soldier. Cleaned up, I see."

"So you've learned my identity. I have to admit I'm impressed, but from what I've learned about you, it doesn't surprise me much."

"You look cold. Please come in." Fraser makes an expansive gesture towards his living room, which is just large enough to hold a sagging armchair and a really old television that sits on a milkcrate full of books. The little room is made smaller by piles of books leaning against every wall. Bucky climbs through the window and notices Fraser's half-dressed state. He is not displeased by it.

"Constable, I don't really get cold. But I do appreciate the offer." And it's true; Bucky doesn't look cold. He's wearing all black, and somehow he makes the sweater and leather and denim look tactical. It doesn't look expensive and weirder, it doesn't look new, but his outfit gives off a "casual Bond" vibe that is 100% different from the sad trash hobo Fraser first encountered huddling under the El. His hair is the same style--messy and wavy--but from mousse and a blow dryer rather than grease and neglect.

"Please, I wish you'd call me Fraser."

"Alright, Fraser." Bucky glances toward the kitchen. "It wasn't my intention to interrupt your meal." Fraser looks a little embarrassed. Diefenbaker chooses this moment to bark once, in greeting rather than alarm, and wags his tail. Unfortunately, the wolf is in the kitchen, and his tail sweeps the cardboard dinner off the counter, sending mashed potato bits spattering everywhere.

"Ah. Well, that's no great loss, really." Dief sniffs a bit of potato, whines, and declines to eat it. "I'll order something in." Fraser reaches for his back pocket and Bucky tenses visibly, sharp intake of breath, but Fraser is pretty practiced at seeming non-threatening. He pulls out his iphone and pokes at it. "Would you like some samosas?"

"I have never eaten samosas that I can recall." Bucky is intrigued and Fraser is off on an explanation of the raptures of saffron and lamb and lentils. He wipes down the kitchen while he talks. He doesn't put on a shirt, though. By the time he's sent off a food order, Bucky's taken off his jacket and boots and is perched on the window seat, Fraser's in the armchair, and they're both relaxed. They keep talking about food, and about the neighborhood. Bucky has talked to most of the neighbors, in various disguises, and they all spoke glowingly of their favorite neighbor. 

Finally the food arrives. Fraser hugs the deliveryman and asks after his family. The man waves at Diefenbaker, sitting contentedly at Bucky's feet, before leaving. The food gets unpacked and served out.

"Fraser, I came because I wanted to thank you for the coffee."

"Please, it was-"

"No, let me finish, please. I had been on the road for months, sleeping outside, ravaged by what had been done to my mind, sunk in despair. When you talked to me, treated me like a man instead of--instead of--" Bucky flinches away from whatever he was thinking, clenches his metal hand in a fist and makes a throwing-away motion. "You were the first person who saw me and spoke to me in a long time. It meant--it means a lot to me." Bucky is also realizing that samosas are as good as macchiatos. Crunchy-tasty-spicy but with vegetable. He mentally files samosas under "nutritive snack foods".

"I guess I have a soft spot for lost souls in this city. When I first came to Chicago, years ago, I was on the trail of the killers of my father--"

Bucky interrupts him: "but after you located and dealt with the killers, you remained here, for various reasons, attached as liaison to the Canadian Consulate."

"Um. Yes. Yes, that is the case." Fraser isn't pouting about his line getting stepped on. A Mountie doesn't pout.

"Also, you solve crimes. Everyone seems to like you."

"Well, I do what I can to help." Fraser slices a boiled egg and spoons it into his mouth.

"I like you too. I mean, as a man." Bucky is looking up at Fraser through wavy brown hair that won't ever seem to stop falling across his eyes. It seems like that hair would make sniping difficult. His lips are soft and full. Fraser is trying to remind himself that assassins are criminals and that a just man does not consort with criminals, but it is too late, he's standing up and moving closer to Bucky, and then remembering the plate of egg curry in his hand and setting it on the TV, and then they're hugging.

The two men are about the same height, so there's no face-on-the-chest awkwardness. Fraser realizes how huge the Winter Soldier's shoulders and arms are, and how cold metal can be even when it is attached to a living man. The breath tickling just behind his ear is warm, though. Bucky leans against the Mountie and enjoys the hug. It is a hug with feeling and depth and the promise of so much more. Their bodies press together and they both feel the tingle of personal chemistry and if there were background music it would be swelling right now for a big romantic kiss.

"I hope you know what you're doing, Benton; I've always said that assassins brainwashed by consortia of Nazis and Russians are just plain trouble," says Fraser's father's ghost from the doorway of the kitchen. So now Fraser is pouting. He so does not need this delusion right now.

"You're right about everything except 'plain'," replies Bucky. "I'm a very exotic sort of trouble."


	3. In Which A Social Relationship Progresses to Something... More?

So the first date had been kinda weird, which considering that to start with they were a cryo-assassin and a Mountie, "weird" was a high bar to clear. Several subsequent dates had gone much better.

The Time They Went To Shedd Aquarium: At the Great Lakes exhibit, Bucky showed off how waterproof his killer arm was by touching the sturgeon with it. A couple of kids saw it too and were also very impressed. Kids are drawn to Fraser when he's in uniform, but he was in civvies (except the hat, he always wears the hat) and so they stared at Bucky. Fraser talked about sea lions and ice sheet ecosystems non-stop through most of the aquarium. Bucky just smiled and listened. By unspoken agreement, they hurried past the octopus, and then Bucky decided to say: "You can talk more, if you want."

"I go on too much. I've spent so much time alone in my life, I don't know how to let other people talk."

"But I like hearing the things you know."

"I'm just rattling off facts. Nothing special about it."

"There's a peace to it. listening to you. Tell me more about sea otters."

"Well, if you insist." They held hands, flesh on flesh. "Sea otters have very dense fur, millions of hairs per square inch, that traps a layer of air against their skin when they're underwater. When they're rolling on the surface, they're renewing that layer after diving, because it helps keep them warm. Very persistent little mammals."

The Time They Stayed In With a Movie: It started with an argument about pizza. Fraser loved Chicago--not as much as he loved his homeland to the north, obviously, but a lot--and therefore he was a proponent of deep-dish pizza. Bucky had missed a lot in deep-freeze but he had an instinctive revulsion. "I can't eat that, Fraser. It just isn't right."

"It's good, come on, they put maple bacon on it."

"I will find the youtube video about this, and make you watch it." Bucky poked at his smartphone. His face fell. "Oh shit."

Fraser looked over Bucky's shoulder, saw the news headline about an American politician, murdered by his own brother, a HYDRA assassin. He took the phone away, gently, and suggested an old movie. He put Hudson Hawk in his VHS player and they laughed at the old-CIA-new-CIA jokes. Laughing at spies was better than crying over them. He ordered the pizza he liked and some buffalo wings, which Bucky approved of, and the next morning they got cappuccinos instead of macchiatos and giggled together about unmanly European coffees.

Bucky's giggle was a little unsettling.

Fraser Sr. had been keeping his peace, which was frankly a relief to Fraser, who did not need a Ghost Dad chaperon, thanks.

Diefenbaker liked Bucky, and not just because he fed the wolf table scraps. They recognized a fierce wildness in each other, deliberately packed away for now, to be taken out at need, so they could live in this city with all of its pretend-civilization.

They argued sometimes about crime. The Mountie had pulled all sorts of files out of the mess put online by the Black Widow--and she was another topic that called for quiet comedy movies at home--but nothing he or his government had access to could tell him what Bucky was up to now. Where was he living? What was he doing for money? The Winter Soldier claimed he was rooting HYDRA out of Chicago in his copious spare time, but even something that appeared good when he worded it right could break a lot of laws.

"I have told you, Constable Fraser," Bucky called him Constable when he was annoyed, "that I'm renting a perfectly fine apartment using a cover identity and money I stole from a HYDRA nest."

"But I searched Chicago PD's records vigorously and there was no trace of the nest or what you did to it. No disturbance calls, no burglary, no--no bodies?" They are walking through a park in Fraser's neighborhood when they have this conversation. Bucky wishes the Mountie would just stop asking, but then again, his dogged determination is one of his more attractive qualities. More so when he is being determined about non-Bucky's-past things, though.

"If there were bodies, they'd have been disposed of in ways of which the Chicago PD has never dreamed."

Bucky huddles deeper into his coat and pulls his scarf over his face. Fraser wonders if he even knows he does that. "That isn't really an answer."

"Yes it is. It just isn't an answer you like."

"You're darn right I don't."

Bucky halts in the middle of the graveled path. He pulls his hands out of his coat pockets and stares at them. Even covered in gloves, you can tell which one is human and which one isn't. He looks up at the Mountie, who seems to be fine with just standing there in the park forever if that's what it takes. He'll just stand there, staring at his lover, being all stupid and good and handsome until the sheer force of it becomes overwhelming and the world becomes nicer just for him. Fuck.

"Benton, I know where there's another safehouse." If Bucky asks the next thing, then the answer will be yes, and everything will be different. They'll become partners. He will have companionship when he works, and it will be someone who actively tries to stop him from being his most effective self. "Do you want to come with me when I burn it?"

"I'd like that very much. Are you sure you won't mind company?"

Bucky looks down at Dief, who is leaning against his knee, jaws wide in a wolfy grin. Fuck effectiveness. Maybe it will be better to work Fraser's way. "Yeah. I'm sure."

**Author's Note:**

> Anything about Bucky Barnes is always the fault of @zarhooie. I'm pretty sure that my characterization of Bucky is heavily influenced by @owlet's This, You Protect (which is pretty much the best fic ever, go read it if you haven't already).
> 
> (also my browser spell-check really wants me to change "macchiato" to "machination" and yeah that seems about right)


End file.
